Hockenheim track talk with Robert Kubica

I enjoy Hockenheim and I’m looking forward to going back there for the first time since 2008. It’s an interesting track, although I feel the old Hockenheim circuit had much more character, but I never raced it. It’s a track where sometimes you are very quick and you don’t know why, and sometimes you are slow and you don’t know why. I find it quite tricky to find the right balance and optimum performance, but it’s a track where you can find a good rhythm.

In terms of the set-up, it’s the kind of track where you need everything. There is a long straight so you need quite a good top speed, but you also need downforce for the final sector. So there are two different ways to approaching Hockenheim: some cars are very quick in the first and second sector and then struggle in the final sector, where you need the downforce. Other cars do the opposite, sacrificing their top speed, but doing very well in the third sector, the stadium complex.

The current track has a couple of corners that are quite interesting, especially turns one and 12 – which are both high-speed. When you look at turn one from outside of the car, you would not imagine that you would go so quickly through this corner because it’s so short, but you can carry quite a lot of speed actually. Turn 12, the entry to the stadium, is also a nice corner, although lately you are not able to use so much of the outside kerb because there is some artificial grass and that makes it quite a tricky place.

All the other corners are medium to low-speed corners and are quite tricky. Turns 16 and 17, for example, which make up a double right-hander just before the start-finish line create quite a lot of understeer. It’s a long corner and a bit off-camber and it’s a bit like a double-apex corner.

Turn 13 is quite interesting. There’s a lot of camber so you can go very deep into the apex and get quite early on power. Of course, you have to watch that you don’t lose the car out of the camber in the exit of the corner.

The best overtaking opportunity is the big braking zone before turn six, which is a really low-speed hairpin after the long straight. It’s a first gear corner and we have seen lots of action there in the past.